Today is going to be scarier than anything else I have tested so far. I am gong it alone today, and I am tackling the Extreme Direlands and the Obsidian Plains.

Same Archer as I started with before levelled to 90 now. His armor has been buffed a bit so that he is in unbaned 275 everywhere. I am buffed with full 6's.

My base stats are as follows:
Str: 150
End: 160
Coo: 245 (Should have gone higher)
Quick: 220
Focus: 190
Self 120

Health: 210
Stamina: 280
Mana: 220 (Should have left it lower)

Arcane: 250
Bow: 333
MeleeD: 342
Alchemy: 282
Fletch: 282
Heal: 272
Lockpick: 282
Item: 225
Magic D: 200
Missile D: 220
Item Tinkering: 300

Those are the base stats. Now at this point I am fully buffed with level 6 protections and all necessary creature spells. I teleport to the extreme direlands to see what life is like.

Bow is 130% AR with +8% Melee D buff with full 6's.

Your first glimpse at a new creature is here.

I come upon a new camp of Shadows. They are not very friendly and weigh in as follows:

Shadow Maelstrom: 100
Tenebrous Shadow: 105
Abyssal Shadow: 110

The full camp is standing there before me looking like a wonderful bag of XP. I begin the fight. Taking the Sinister first. I open with a crit and clean its clock for 180. I was hopeful this was a prequel to the fight, simply not to be. The Tenebrous and Abyssal close QUICKLY. They start swinging. I am dodging pretty well so I am not that worried about it.

The sinister is standing at the same distance launching arrows at me. Fire arrows. Deadly Fire Arrows. Ow. 11-30 through my armor and spells, guess that new yumi he is using is doing the trick. I focus on the tenebrous that is debuffing me. I am 70-80% to hit it and it takes me about 12 arrows to kill. XP gained 47k. Next the Abyssal. In between heals and drinking potions, I am deadlocked with this creature. It is not easy to kill. I get back to full and pull out of the sinisters range to avoid the added damage from him. As I am not dodging him reliably. about 1 in 6 if that.

I begin to unload on the abyssal. 60-75%, it was a harried fight. I end up killing it with about 20 arrows and net 51k. Next the sinister. Close a little and unload, 5 arrows later (total of 7)he falls before me. For I am Mighty! I net 42k off of him. Their loot is nice about the same as Umbris. They are costly to fight though.

I move to Bloodletter and Ascendant spawn. The Ascendant are crippled quickly. The Bloodletter closes with me and I am hitting about 50% in close quarter fighting. I vary my attack height and blammo a hit, followed by another. My ratio to hit increases to 60% and on average 7 arrows it is dead. Nice XP too.

Next up Platinums and Pyreals. They still hang out with one another. I unload and handle the camp very easily. I even resisted the Platinum once. Well once was good enough for me.

I move on to quiddity rift, plink 89, plink 79, plink oh crap it's sending it's minions. It heals pretty quickly still but I think I can beat the regen if I stay to fight. Those dam executors are still mage food though and I am forced to retreat. (I didn't bring my phantom.)

Tuskers are out here too, I take down Assailer and Rampager, no problem.

Looking around I spy a group of Olthoi Warriors. I start the fight and notice a little one approaching me. Oh cute. Oh so not cute. What are these little things? Where did they come from and why are they breathing such potent acid on me? (On a side note: It wasn't acid they were breathing on me. It was electricity. A bug that I just finished fixing. Now they breath acid that hurts a lot. I'm serious.) I need to explain that by now I am toting around a Clumsiness 5, Slow 5, and Vulnerabilities. Life is pain at the moment and I am running for my life. I get away and turn back to them to take down that little ring leader. I do so, but it takes me a bundle of arrows (8ish) but those Olthoi are much more worth the arrows.

New Tumeroks out here as well. Interesting. I check them out. I am 60/40 on the one over 120 and the one at 115 is roughneck! Though I need to heal against their arrow onslaught I am still better than 60% on all of them.

I finish the first leg of the test in about 1/2 hour. I've grabbed a total of 4 million xp and enough loot to more than cover my costs. I ran away a lot, healed a lot but was able to handle the spawns very well.

Part 2. Obsidian Plains.

Thicker spawns, more of the same type of monster with newer Virindi and some grievvers as well as other frightening cohorts thrown in for good measure. It's not easy living in here until I find a gully that I can pull to.

I hunt here for about half an hour as well and become very careful about pulling tactics. Running means not stopping until you find a portal. Very, very, very scary. I dodge the Olthoi Warrior's friends (They've got big nasty breath I tell you!) and end up closing out the hunt by buffing the bow for another 45 minutes. I stop after half an hour on the plains.

Now I am keeping the plains description short.

I had originally intended on making it a separate post that went into great detail of the adventures involved, but decided that there was far too much fun there to be discovered. It was like taking a Paladin into Hell. Running, jumping, freaking out and screaming while disturbing my co-workers while mashing keys to survive a never ending onslaught of attacks and spells. Scary, scary stuff.

Tomorrow I close out the adventure logs, and go into hardcore testing. But all day tomorrow is dedicated to running a melee through the same gauntlets that we took the archer through.

Until then.

Orion